Word Origin & History

"hold a second job, especially at night," 1957 (implied in moonlighting), from moonlighter (1954), from the notion of working by the light of the moon; see moonlight (n.). Related: Moonlighting. Earlier the word had been used to mean "commit crimes at night" (1882).

Example Sentences for moonlighted

He walked over the moonlighted green, which was now quite deserted.

Dancing still, encircled by my arms, and gliding along like a sea-nymph on moonlighted foam, she sighed restlessly.

Through his brain swept a vision, moonlighted, of the fair witch's haunt, and her nude shape dominant as she condemned him.

It was warm, but a soft breeze blew in from the moonlighted Hudson just below them.

For a long while he sat there, his pipe dead, his eyes on the moonlighted out-of-doors.

My companion on this visit was the young gentleman who slid into the sentimentals, as I have recorded, upon the moonlighted mole.

What more delightful than to stand in the moonlighted garden and pluck the velvet leaves.

That look was to me like a net thrown into moonlighted water: it brought nothing back but broken lights of a miraculous beauty.

When he had first entered the moonlighted room, she had turned from the piano and had held out her hands to him.

I can feel your presence as I felt it that night in the empty house as you stood on the threshold of that moonlighted room.